Nothing came of this until July 1869, when I received a reprint of the above letter, with a comment, described as Appendix D of a work in course of publication on the geometry of the circle. The Athenæum journal received the same: but the Editor, in his private capacity, received the whole work, being The Geometry of the Circle and Mathematics as applied to Geometry by Mathematicians, shown to be a mockery, delusion, and a snare, Liverpool, 8vo, 1869. Mr. J. S. here appears in deep fight with Professor Whitworth,[[648]] and Mr. Wilson,[[649]] the author of the alleged amendment of Euclid. How these accomplished mathematicians could be inveigled into continued discussion is inexplicable. Mr. Whitworth began by complaining of Mr. Smith's attacks upon mathematicians, continued to correspond after he was convinced that J. S. proved an arc and its chord to be equal, and only retreated when J. S. charged him with believing in 3⅛, and refusing acknowledgment. Mr. Wilson was introduced to J. S. by a volunteer defense of his geometry from the assaults of the Athenæum. This the editor would not publish; so J. S. sent a copy to Mr. Wilson himself. Some correspondence ensued, but Mr. Wilson soon found out his man, and withdrew.
There is a little derision of the Athenæum and a merited punishment for "that unscrupulous critic and contemptible mathematical twaddler, De Morgan."
MR. REDDIE'S ASTRONOMY.
At p. 183 I mentioned Mr. Reddie,[[650]] the author of Vis Inertiæ Victa and of Victoria toto cœlo,[[651]] which last is not
an address to the whole heaven, either from a Roman Goddess or a British Queen, whatever a scholar may suppose. Between these Mr. Reddie has published The Mechanics of the Heavens, 8vo, 1862: this I never saw until he sent it to me, with an invitation to notice it, he very well knowing that it would catch. His speculations do battle with common notions of mathematics and of mechanics, which, to use a feminine idiom, he blasphemes so you can't think! and I suspect that if you do not blaspheme them too, you can't think. He appeals to the "truly scientific," and would be glad to have readers who have read what he controverts, i.e., Newton's Principia: I wish he may get them; I mean I hope he may obtain them. To none but these would an account of his speculations be intelligible: I accordingly disposed of him in a very short paragraph of description. Now many paradoxers desire notice, even though it be disparaging. I have letters from more than one—besides what have been sent to the Editor of the Athenæum—complaining that they are not laughed at; although they deserve it, they tell me, as much as some whom I have inserted. Mr. Reddie informs me that I have not said a single word against his books, though I have given nearly a column to sixteen-string arithmetic, and as much to animalcule universes. What need to say anything to readers of Newton against a book from which I quoted that revolution by gravitation is demonstrably impossible? It would be as useless as evidence against a man who has pleaded guilty. Mr. Reddie derisively thanks me for "small mercies"; he wrote me private letters; he published them, and more, in the Correspondent. He gave me, pro viribus suis,[[652]] such a dressing you can't think, both for my Budget non-notice, and for reviews which he assumed me to have written. He outlawed himself by declaring (Correspondent, Nov. 11, 1856) that I—in a review—had made a quotation which was "garbled, evidently on purpose
to make it appear that" he "was advocating solely a geocentric hypothesis, which is not true." In fact, he did his best to get larger "mercy." And he shall have it; and at a length which shall content him, unless his mecometer be an insatiable apparatus. But I fear that in other respects I shall no more satisfy him than the Irish drummer satisfied the poor culprit when, after several times changing the direction of the stroke at earnest entreaty, he was at last provoked to call out, "Bad cess to ye, ye spalpeen! strike where one will, there's no plasing ye!"
Mr. Reddie attaches much force to Berkeley's[[653]] old arguments against the doctrine of fluxions, and advances objections to Newton's second section, which he takes to be new. To me they appear "such as have been often made," to copy a description given in a review: though I have no doubt Mr. Reddie got them out of himself. But the whole matter comes to this: Mr. Reddie challenged answer, especially from the British Association, and got none. He presumes that this is because he is right, and cannot be answered: the Association is willing to risk itself upon the counter-notion that he is wrong, and need not be answered; because so wrong that none who could understand an answer would be likely to want one.
Mr. Reddie demands my attention to a point which had already particularly struck me, as giving the means of showing to all readers the kind of confusion into which paradoxers are apt to fall, in spite of the clearest instruction. It is a very honest blunder, and requires notice: it may otherwise mislead some, who may suppose that no one able to read could be mistaken about so simple a matter,
let him be ever so wrong about Newton. According to his own mis-statement, in less than five months he made the Astronomer Royal abandon the theory of the solar motion in space. The announcement is made in August, 1865, as follows: the italics are not mine: